


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by edgelordjonesthethird



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Car Accident, F/M, First Love, Loss of Virginity, Mind the Tags, Romance, Suicide, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 04:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgelordjonesthethird/pseuds/edgelordjonesthethird
Summary: He was her first, her last, her everything.





	Between the Shadow and the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, okay? Don't send me hate messages on Tumblr.

**I**

It had always been him, Betty Cooper knew that from the very first moment they met.  She nine while he had just turned ten. It was a crisp October afternoon in Riverdale and Betty was looking to escape her mother.        Her father was away on business to get the newest story of political corruption in Greendale. Her older sister, Polly, had the brains to go stay at a friends house on the basis of a “big Science project.” Betty wasn’t as lucky which meant the matriarch of the family had all the time in the world to lay into the youngest member of the family; whether it was about her hair, the state of her dress or the amount o dessert she had consumed at dinner the previous night,

Betty had decided during one of Alice Cooper’s wine induced naps she would relocate to the park, just her and her Nancy Drew handbook. She wandered the playground a bit for a place to settle down and finally decided to plant herself against the trunk of a large Oak tree and pulled her cornerstone open. She turned to a page about lockpicking, hoping to use the page to pop open Polly’s bedroom and borrow her clothes while she was out with friends. She got lost in the thought of mini skirts and growing up; getting away from her mother when a red drop hit the corner of the page. It caused her chest to tighten. What if it was blood, what if she was about to be slashed like in that horror double feature she had snuck into one night while her mother was out? Oh god, she was too young to die.

Betty looked up, hoping not to see a corpse dangling; instead, a thin boy with dark hair tucked under a crown beanie and eyes that reminded her of Sweetwater River gazed down at her while he chomped on a hamburger. “What are you doing?” she called up, with a chuckle of relief.

The boy held his burger up. “Enjoying Pop’s world-class burgers!” he slurped from a yellow take-out cup for emphasis. “And shakes!”

Betty tilted her head and cocked an eyebrow. “In a tree?” She giggled. “So that’s just ketchup, not blood?”

“Nope, not blood!” The boy assured her. “Just enjoying my one hot meal and hiding from a numbskull who wants to make my life miserable!”

Betty frowned, she had been pouting about her mother caring too much about her well being while this boy was hiding in a tree trying to enjoy one hearty meal a day. She was about to question him further when she was interrupted.

A voice echoed through the fog of the decrepit playground. “Jughead Jones, you can run but you can’t hide!” A squeaky voice screamed.

Betty’s head snapped up to the boy she could only assume was “Jughead.” _Jughead?_ What kind of name was that? The boy held a boney finger to his full lips like a silent prayer. Betty nodded and plopped back down against the tree and pretended to read her book. They would hide in plain sight.

Through her peripheral vision, she saw a gaggle of boys run across the grass, headed by a beefy boy with dark hair. When the group was out of sight Betty gazed back up at the boy she could only assume was Jughead.

The boy slid down the tree and grinned ear to ear at her. “My Savior.” He bowed.

“You can just call me Betty!” She giggled and dig eared the page of her book and stood up. “And I guess you’re Jughead.”

The boy extended a hand to her; they were kind of grubby and his nails were bitten down. “Jughead Jones the third.” He introduced. “How can I repay you?”

Betty took his hand and shook it. “Betty Cooper.” She tilted her head in thought. “Come to dinner.”

“I’m repaying _you_ with a free meal?” Jughead blanched with wide eyes.

Betty knew her mother wouldn’t lay into her- as much with the company. “Consider yourself my protector.” She reasoned.

Jughead nodded his head in agreement. “Okay, you protect me and I protect you.” He settled.

And the way it became after that. Jughead Jones always had her back while she had his. They were one another’s, first true protectors. They were one another’s first everything. _Everything._

**II**

He was her first kiss. A chaste one under the mistletoe at Alice Cooper’s annual holiday party. She will always remember all the details; her green sequins party dress that fell just above the knees and him in the nicest least worn sweater he owned. She was fourteen and he was fifteen, the taste of the spiked egg they had stolen lingered on their lips. It wasn’t overly wet like Ginger Lopez warned her it would be. It was perfect. That was the day she declared to herself she would love him forever.

He was the first boy she had made love to. A moment not stolen but consented upon when she was sixteen and he was seventeen. A month after they started dating officially, it was on his couch during their weekly movie night after his mother had ditched town and his father was doing a particularly lengthy stay at Shankshaw for armed robbery. He told her he had never felt so alone and she wanted to show him that wasn’t true. It was awkward, it hurt a little, and it didn’t last very long. But what it symbolized was so beautiful. That was the night she declared to him she would love him forever.

Her was her first roommate; both resided in his trailer when her mother’s wine habit became too much. They managed to “christen” every room in the house. After he begged to marry her which she gleefully replied with a “someday.” Even though in the back of her mind visions of white lace dresses, white picket fences, and raven-haired children with green eyes danced. She didn’t want to think about a life without him.

That is until she had to live it. He was her first everything including her first great loss. A car accident was the cause of death on the certificate but Betty knew the truth; it had been her. She had teased him, he had looked over at her and laughed. She will never forget the way his laugh rippled through his chest. The next thing she knew is the car had flipped over and he was gone. _It should have been her._

III

Betty couldn’t make it to the funeral, her condition was far too unstable; she had been in a drug induced coma the first week of her hospital stay. She woke up to a shattered leg now held together by hardware and stitched together by skin grafts that were taken with a cheese grater from her ass. One had failed so they went back in.

She was laid up in her bed for a month; the first few months. She spent the day of his actual funeral with his favorite beanie perched upon her head as she watched his favorite series of horror films; Scream and The Nightmare on Elm Street series. Anything Hitchcock would have been too much for her at the moment.

**III**

Betty finally made it to the graveyard two months later; she was bundled up in his favorite Sherpa jacket and his beanie once again. She fell to her knees in front of the grave which read.

                                    **_“Forsythe Pendelton Jones III_**

**_Jughead to his friends_ **

**_2002-2018”_ **

“I’m so sorry.” She sobbed. “It should have been me or at least I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”

She thought of the promise they made all those years ago. How they vowed to protect one another and how she failed.

“I broke my promise and I  won’t do that again.” She whispered and gripped the headstone “I will be with you soon, and that’s a promise I will actually keep, I will be reunited with you.”

Betty took out a handful of narcotics she had been saving up, ones that had been prescribed to her for the pain, but the physical pain didn’t compare to the emotional pain she had been going through. She dry swallowed the bundle and laid there quietly, waiting to see him again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, that was angsty.


End file.
